4. Evaluation recommendations

The effects of DAC 1 projects on the dynamics of gender relations are generally not very much observable. This is mainly due to the lack of explicit gender-specific objectives in the logical frameworks and thus the absence of specific monitoring and investigation of this issue in project evaluations.

The two DAC 2 projects that are the subject of a case study (“C’est la vie” and “TSKB – Women’s employment”) have had positive effects on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices ofbeneficiaries (see Table below).

Table 13 – Example of changes in knowledge, attitudes and practices of project beneficiaries

Concerning the “TSKB – Women’s employment” project, the interviews conducted, and the evaluation carried out after one year of implementation have made it possible to identify a contribution of the project to the reinforcement of awareness and knowledge of gender equality and employment of women at the level of the companies involved. The project is also likely to change the policies and practices of the companies to advance gender equality and strengthen the situation of women employees within them: improvement of recruitment processes for women, and development of employment opportunities for women in particular.

[Extrait de la monographie du projet «TSKB- Emploi des femmes», CTR 1064]

Five strategic recommendations were formulated in response to the main issues identified through the evaluation. They are presented in order of importance and are broken down into courses of action. They may be new actions, existing actions that should be strengthened, or existing actions that could be re-launched. As the evaluation covers the 2014-2018 period, several actions have already been initiated by AFD, in particular the Social Link Unit, which has a dedicated gender unit with 6 full-time equivalents. An effort has been made to revive the training offer and workshops dedicated to prospecting have been organized in several geographic areas. A training and capacity building plan on gender adapted to the different needs of the operational teams is underway as well as the production of a training kit for the trainers of the gender section of the Social Link Unit. In addition, the network of gender focal points has been re-launched.

4.1 Recommendation n°1: consolidate the strategic foundations of AFD’s commitment and intervention in favor of the gender priority

•Redefine the objectives of AFD’s new Gender

Strategy and ensure their dissemination internally (at headquarters and in the network of country offices) and externally, particularly to counterparties.

(i) The quantitative objectives defined during the previous period were a powerful lever for deploying AFD’s

Gender Strategy. These must be redefined, in agreement with the supervisory bodies, in line with the ambition of the “feminist agency” whose specific intervention in favour of equality (DAC 2 in particular) should not replace or compensate for the intervention in favour of the transversal integration of gender (gender mainstreaming - DAC 1 in particular), each corresponding, in our opinion, to specific and complementary objectives (and proficiencies).

In particular, it may be necessary to

apply quantitative objectives to each technical division and geographic department, or even to each manager, to return to a strict definition of DAC 2 and to ensure a sufficient level of ambition for DAC 1 qualification so as to continue to push practices upwards, possibly by accepting and assuming, at least temporarily, that the objectives set will not be reached within the planned timeframe. (ii) The clarification of objectives should notably allow AFD to position more clearly its “feminist” strategy and its orientations: equality between women and men and/or gender equality, inclusion of LGBTI people, intersectional approach, rights-based approach, transformative approach, approach in favour of women’s empowerment and/ or approach in favour of reducing the gender gap, etc.

Table 14 – Extract from the benchmarking with SIDA (Sweden)

SIDA’s gender strategy is based on: - Gender mainstreaming, starting from the functioning of the institution itself and extending to the projects supported - A rights-based approach, where the main objective is the full enjoyment of their rights by women and girls - The principle of intersectionality, affirming that gender discrimination is also affected by age, origin, class, social status, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, and religious beliefs, and that these must be taken into account - A GAD Gender and Development approach, where the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality is emphasized - A transformative approach, as opposed to “counting” or “gender-sensitive” approaches: SIDA aims to contribute to changing social norms, cultural values, power structures and the roots of gender inequalities.

[Extrait de la monographie du projet «C’est la vie» – SAN, CAD 2, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger et Sénégal] (iii) The elements of language thus formalized could serve as a basis for

AFD’s internal and external training and communication materials, which need to be renewed, in the spirit of the publication “Equality between women and men, a priority for AFD” (April 2021) by marking the additional step, difficult to distinguish today, that is taken with the claim to be a “feminist agency”. (iv) Associate AFD’s Gender Strategy with the objectives and efforts related to more egalitarian and inclusive human resources management, as a necessary condition of legitimacy and credibility, for example by transparently publishing the key figures of the inventory carried out within the framework of the AFNOR certification, the target objectives defined following it and by reporting on their annual progress.

•Ensure that gender is properly integrated into sectoral and geographic strategies.

No AFD sectoral and geographic strategy should be gender-blind or content with the minimum and should include, in order to be validated: contextual and diagnostic elements, at least one strategic or operational objective associated with at least one monitoring indicator relating to gender equality, defined with the support of the Social Link Unit.

•Strengthen the articulation between gender and climate priorities.

(i) It could be envisaged to strengthen collaboration between the teams in charge of the appraisal of gender projects at the Environmental and

Social Sustainable Development

Support Division or the Social Link Unit and climate projects and to experiment joint review times. (ii) A toolkit or specific manual for project team leaders and country offices teams could be produced to explain the links between gender and climate and to identify the main questions to ask to combine the two issues during project design to break the sense of competition. This publication could draw on the experience of the Asian

Development Bank [8] .

[8] Training manual to support country-driven gender and climate change. 4.2 Recommendation n°2: strengthen the support of the gender priority by all levels of AFD management

Beyond the quantitative objectives assigned to the Gender CIF, the Gender Strategy seems to have been less supported by AFD management than the climate strategy, for example, which has been in place for several years. Managers have not participated much in training sessions, which may have contributed to the loss of momentum in the design of the Gender CIF.

We propose the following courses of action:

•Formally involve the general management in the deployment of the Gender Strategy.

(i) One possibility would be to revive the annual gender steering committees and to involve one or more representatives of the general direction in the strategic discussions on the progress of the Gender Strategy. (ii) These annual steering committees could usefully be opened to gender and feminist partners and experts, who would be invited to act as compasses and guarantors of the real implementation of AFD’s feminist ambitions, which seem difficult to fully assume internally.

•Promote the dissemination of knowledge and the development of managers’ skills on gender.

(i) In particular, we propose to strengthen the place given to gender in the training of managers. Participation in gender training could be integrated into the individual objectives of managers at headquarters, in regional offices and within the network of country offices in order to increase the proportion of managers or directors trained on the issue. (ii) A time of capitalization dedicated to gender could be systematized during the network weeks. This could include the intervention of recognized experts (academics, international consultants, etc.) to discuss the rationale and the orientations of the Strategy to ensure their proper understanding and full appropriation by the teams, as is the

case for a subject as “technical” as climate change, for example. (iii) Particular attention could be given to the mobilization of managers in the framework of the FAPS [9] Gender steering committees to show concrete examples of gender integration in projects.

•Strengthen the place of gender in the dialogue between managers and their teams.

(i) In particular, we suggest improving the procedures for dialogue between managers and gender focal points, both at headquarters and in country offices, based on an assignment sheet detailing the activities carried out by the gender focal points and the time to be devoted to them. (ii) A half-yearly review could be organized between the managers and the gender focal points in order to discuss the specific needs of the service as well as the follow-up of the

CAD 1 and 2 projects.

[9] Facilitation of project initiation, preparation and follow-up. 4.3 Recommendation n°3: encourage the involvement of country offices in project identification and dialogue with counterparties

One of the major lessons of the evaluation is that the country offices have taken little ownership of the Gender Strategy and the main tools that have been developed. This would explain the fact that country offices teams have often encountered difficulties in engaging in dialogue with counterparties on gender and identifying projects.

We suggest several courses of action here:

•Strengthen the regional offices’ role of animation and guidance on gender issues.

(i) Based on the overall quantitative objectives for each geographic department, define, with the support of the Social Link Unit, gender action plans at the level of each regional office, associated with specific resources and a monitoring and evaluation system, for which the regional department is responsible. (ii) Although a gender focal point has been appointed in each regional office, tasks that they carry out are different from one office to another. In order to harmonize these tasks and to ensure that the time to be devoted to them is secure, we suggest that a job description be drawn up jointly by the Social

Link Unit and the network of gender focal points and shared with all the regional offices and the geographic divisions at headquarters.

(iii) One of the central missions assigned to the gender focal points in the regional offices would be to lead and support the gender focal points in the country offices. This support would include updating country profiles and formalizing a gender action plan for all county offices. Another mission could be the design and share of gender prospecting tools, in collaboration with the

Social Link Unit. A final mission could be the animation of regional networks of good practices on gender, based on the model of the Gender Innovation

Labs (GIL) developed by the World Bank (see Table below).

Table 15 – Extract from the World Bank benchmarking

The World Bank has evolved its strategy from an initial gender mainstreaming approach to a gender gap approach that relies on:

- An institutionalized learning process – via Gender Innovation Labs (GILs) – that allows for capturing results and having a convincing dialogue with counterparties based on evidence: the GILs have a budget of $74.6 million, in particular to carry out impact evaluations via the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality. WB staff no longer play the role of “gender police” by imposing targets but are thus able to provide evidence of what works based on the work of the GILs.

- A model for upstream gender tagging support to target gender differences in the 4 pillars of the strategy, starting at the project design stage.

[Extract from the World Bank benchmarking report sheet]. (iv) This strengthening of gender focal points requires an increase in the resources allocated to them: for example, 0.2 FTE at the level of headquarters and country offices and 0.5 FTE at the level of regional offices, for which the managers would be accountable.

•Equip country offices’ teams to engage in dialogue with counterparties. One of the main obstacles mentioned by country offices’ teams is the difficulty they encounter in initiating and maintaining a dialogue on gender with their counterparties. Several levers could be used with the appropriate resources:

(i) Strengthen financial incentives and bonuses for gender integration. (ii) Provide country offices with a summary document presenting the main objectives of AFD’s new Gender

Strategy and position it in relation to other donors’ strategies. (iii) Make training mandatory for gender focal points in country offices and propose a practical module focused on gender integration in prospecting activities (how to be convincing and develop a gender argument). (iv) Increase the number of prospecting missions conducted by the Social Link

Unit in the countries and involve the country offices’ gender focal points. (v) Systematize a time for discussion on gender with counterparties during traditional monitoring and/or prospecting missions, conducted in collaboration with project managers. (vi) Support the development of exchanges between counterparties and institutional and civil society organizations dedicated to gender, specifically women’s organizations, to open dialogue and ground it in local dynamics in favour of equality so that it is reinforced.

4.4 Recommendation n°4: renew the training and capitalization strategy ongender

The launch of the Gender CIF in 2014 was accompanied by a significant training effort on gender and the emergence of a community of practice among the most motivated project team leaders, but which gradually ran out of steam, mainly due to the lack of resources allocated to the team in charge of steering the Gender Strategy. The challenge is therefore to re-launch the training dynamic with new recruits, but also to keep the community of practice around gender alive by relying more on capitalization tools.

Table 16 – Extract from the benchmarking with SIDA (Sweden)

Prior to 2018, SIDA as an agency considered itself to have gender integration in its “DNA”. It was assumed that the agency’s agenda was known to everyone within it, including newcomers. The 2018 strategy is based on the observation that this consideration did not allow for the appropriation of this objective. The “capacity building” dynamic has therefore been greatly increased, in particular through

- Specific training for gender focal points; - Basic training deployed on a large scale, on a continuous basis, including for newcomers; - The proposal of gender themes during the bi-monthly capacity building sessions (gender social norms next month, for example); - Integrating gender training into the two annual “learning weeks”; - The Helpdesk solution to find answers to questions quickly. SIDA recognizes that gender integration is complex, even within an organization that defines itself as feminist, and involves an ambitious process of continuous, unending training.

[Excerpt from the SIDA benchmarking report sheet] We propose the following courses of action:

•Strengthen gender training for newcomers.

While since 2018, a gender awareness session has been incorporated into the training for new hires, we suggest lengthening its format (one day instead of 3 hours). • Systematize training for all gender focal points.

Between 2014 and 2018, nearly 50% of gender focal points did not receive specific gender training, which is a significant limitation. We therefore suggest making it mandatory for all gender focal points at headquarters, regional offices, and country offices to receive at least two days of training. • Encourage sector-specific training and launch the production of additional sector-specific toolkits on emerging themes (governance, media, etc.) with project managers and translate these tools into English to facilitate their appropriation by non-French speaking country offices’ employees. • Encourage feedback on the most emblematic gender projects based on evaluations and targeted literature reviews. The objective should be to build the advocacy and design capacity of DAC 1 and DAC 2 quality projects for country offices’ teams. • Strengthen links with the research community.

One or more partnerships could be formed with universities or research centers specializing in gender and development issues, and several targeted studies could be launched each year.

These new collaborations could be modelled on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s partnership with Stanford University.

Table 17 – Extract from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation benchmarking

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with various experts to implement its gender strategy: - Its conceptual model based on empowerment was developed with the gender team of the Royal Tropical Institute of the Netherlands (RTI) based on the state of ongoing gender research. - Equality Institute accompanied the formalization of its monitoring and evaluation system by proposing a set of gender-sensitive indicators relevant to the empowerment-based conceptual model

- Stanford University is a key partner of the Foundation:

• It oversees capacity building activities on gender for Foundation staff: online trainings, podcast series, etc. • It provides on-demand technical support to all Foundation teams: by requesting a “ticket” for technical support on gender, staff receive rapid technical expertise from Stanford University teams.

[Excerpt from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation benchmarking report sheet]. 4.5 Recommendation n°5: strengthen gender integration at certain key stages of projects

The evaluation examined integration at different stages of the projects’ life cycle. Three critical stages were identified: • Project identification. We refer here to the proposals made for recommendation n°3 to strengthen the dialogue between country offices and counterparties on gender. • Contextual analysis during the appraisal stage.

During the period studied for the evaluation, few specific studies were undertaken on the issue of gender and the presentation of contextual data relating to gender is often succinct, particularly for DAC 1 projects. This is a major obstacle to ensuring the relevance of projects, but also a hindrance to engaging in a constructive dialogue with counterparties.

(i) We therefore propose to make it mandatory to carry out a gender analysis, based at least on secondary data, as well as to identify relevant local partners on gender for the identified project before the project is granted by the credit committee. (ii) A specific budget is dedicated to these mandatory preliminary gender analyses. It could, for example, finance a framework contract with specialized service providers that can be easily mobilized by project managers. (iii) Training and capitalization opportunities make it possible to ensure the proper implementation and usefulness of these gender analyses: objectives, methodologies, obstacles, levers, results, use in project design, etc.

•Project monitoring and evaluation:

(i) The analysis of DAC 1 projects carried out during the evaluation highlighted the fact that the specific gender objectives of the projects are often not very explicit in the logical frameworks, which mechanically limits the ability to monitor the expected achievements and to evaluate their effects. A dialogue could be initiated between the Social Link Unit, the Environmental and Social Sustainable Development

Support Division, Capacity

Development Unit and the Evaluation and Learning Division to improve the integration of gender in the logical frameworks of DAC 1 projects. (ii) Nearly 50% of the DAC 1 and 2 projects analysed include monitoring indicators disaggregated by sex (essentially concerning the participation of women and men in the actions implemented), but these are infrequently used in the management of the project, both by the project managers and the counterparties. One possibility would be to strengthen the dialogue between the two parties when designing these indicators. This could be done within the framework of experimental training-actions led by Capacity

Development Unit and/or Evaluation and Learning Division in conjunction with the Social Link Unit. Another approach would be to use project evaluations to reconstruct “generic” intervention logics by major intervention sector that could be added to the sectoral toolboxes. This approach has, for example, been deployed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has chosen to structure the monitoring-evaluation system for gender projects around the three key stages of empowerment (knowledge acquisition, attitude change and practice change)[10]

[10] Note that these three steps correspond to the main expected impacts of the two DAC2 projects examined in the case studies.

Le groupe Agence française de développement (AFD) met en œuvre la politique de la France en matière de développement et de solidarité internationale. Composé de l’AFD, en charge du financement du secteur public et des ONG, de Proparco, pour le financement du secteur privé, et bientôt d’Expertise France, agence de coopération technique, il finance, accompagne et accélère les transitions vers un monde plus cohérent et résilient.

Nous construisons avec nos partenaires des solutions partagées, avec et pour les populations du Sud. Nos équipes sont engagées dans plus de 4000 projets sur le terrain, dans les Outre-mer, dans 115 pays et dans les territoires en crise, pour les biens communs – le climat, la biodiversité, la paix, l’égalité femmes-hommes, l’éducation ou encore la santé. Nous contribuons ainsi à l’engagement de la France et des Français en faveur des Objectifs de développement durable. Pour un monde en commun.

Directeur de la publication Rémy Rioux Directrice de la rédaction Nathalie Le Denmat Création graphique MeMo, Juliegilles, D.Cazeils Conception et réalisation Comme un Arbre!

Dépôt légal 3e trimestre 2021 ISSN 2425-7087 Imprimé par le service de reprographie de l’AFD

Pour consulter les autres publications de la collection ExPost: www.afd.fr/fr/collection/evaluations-ex-post